I used to work in an office but I was always criticized for not having friends at work. My goal was to become an educator but the office did not support said goal so my college friends told me to keep my mouth shut and do my job. I did do my job correctly but I had no idea how to participate at a meeting. Posted by Snake on March 30, at 9: As someone who has spent his whole career evaluating talent and building teams to evaluate talent, effective interpersonal skills and managing office relationships are one of the consistent gaps or deficiencies that I see people struggle with at all levels, from individual contributors just out of college to executive leadership.

The new book Conscious Business by Fred Kofman is a must read for people interested in this topic. The Kofman book explores this in great detail, and for me personally, provided a level of self-awareness regarding these principles that I did not expect. Posted by Jason Warner on January 26, at 1: Peter, thanks for introducing birth order theory here. I am a big fan of birth order theory even though when I interviewed the king of birth order research, Frank Sulloway, he would confirm very little.

Posted by peter vajda on January 26, at 1: Listen rather than talk. Do what matters to the other person. We need to learn to play the game of work in an honest, authentic manner. Posted by Dave on January 26, at 4: It now dawns on me as to why I am in the midst of "a slow, painful career death" in my short 10yrs out of school. One is nice to go to, if you can swing it. You just need to make genuine connections with a lot of individual people at work.

Each person will have something in common with you if you dig around enough. Find that thing and really make it matter. The important part of this advice is that you have to allow for a significant portion of each of your work days to be devoted to building relationships. I applaud your honest effort in the social arena.

One of the biggest indicators of whether someone will succeed socially is if they have huge intent to. So you are doing fine for yourself in that regard. Posted by Adam on January 26, at 8: Yesterday at a friends house there was an experience shared of a boss who never tolerates dissent of any sort. If one does that, either one gets transferred out of the group or out of the job. Even in an extreme case like this, there is no point in trying to change your boss.

You can work with that. Posted by Gautam Ghosh on January 28, at However, everyone else seems to have moved on to better stuffs except me. I always thought of myself as the longest nobody working in my department. And of course I refuse to play the game…always thinking that my hard work and long hour sacrifice would someday pay off…. And so I have decided to join the inevitable and see how far it might take me. Thank you again for the enlightened post.

Posted by CKWong on January 29, at While I like this post on principle, I think the issue of politics is getting conflated with being stuck on a dead-end track. There are many reasons one can get stuck running in place forever, and quite a few of them have little to do with politics.

If you take any company over a five year period and you look at who moves up the ladder and when, some obvious patterns will emerge. Lots of jobs lead sideways no matter who holds them or how hard they work. One of the worst beatings I ever took in my career happened largely because I underestimated the willingness of a certain person to repeatedly question my competency behind my back. My general experience is that the more competent people are, the less of this goes on, which gives some sense of when you have to be most on guard for it.

What I like about your comment is that you lay out so many different aspects of office politics. And the best way to move yourself from a bad position to a good position is via office politics: Find out where the good positions are, find out who can get you there, and befriend them. No matter what, it starts with politics.

The Best Way to Play Office Politics

The worst thing to do in a career is to approach a problem thinking you have no control over it. You can control everything becuase you choose how you work and you choose where you work. The fine tuning of all this is the politics. Posted by Colin Kingsbury on January 29, at 3: Thanks for your response.

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I think that most people recognize a difference between positive politics, where people are maneuvering for ends that are broadly well-intentioned, and negative politics, where people are seeking private advantage or working from more mixed motives. Posted by Colin Kingsbury on January 29, at 4: I like this post quite a bit and think that you are absolutely correct that nobody can afford to ignore office politics.

Similar to Colin, I think, I have noticed that the people who complain about office politics the most are people that:. I think, in the right environment, office politics can be challenging. In the wrong environment, it can be debilitating. A better use of emotional capital would be an honest self-assessment and work toward finding a new job that is a better fit. Posted by Carter Cathey on February 15, at Posted by Timothy Johnson on March 14, at 2: Secondly, and more importantly, your other comments bring up the exact thing that I hate about office politics: My main issue is when you have to do that kind of thing to jackass superiors for which you have little respect or that you may even downright despise.

Posted by John on March 29, at I work in a company where almost everyone sucks, except me. I was being laid off just because I do not know how to please my lady boss. Now that i have left the company and embarking on a new career soon, I am very concern the nightmares I had in my previous company will haunt on me — retrenchment. Most of the time, I would require more time to understand the person before I open up myself. I guess this is mainly because i am an introvert by nature. Please advise how do I overcome my shyness before I was being retrenched due to poor socialising.

Here are other things you need to get over: Your sexist attitude toward female management — you add a gender qualifier to your boss in your comment yet none is necessary unless you have a hard time with women. Your misunderstanding about what skills are important at work — at this point, the only skill you need to work on is being kind.

How to Master Office Politics and Win Big

You need to understand why you do not feel kind toward other people and what you can do to change that. Posted by Sherlyn May on July 16, at 8: I find this article to be just the opposite of what is really happening. My belief is that people continously politic not to better themselves, but to get ahead because they really do not know what they are doing in the first place so they use that to move to the next level.

Think of it this way…you can be the best at what you do, read books to better yourself and get advice outside the work place. Posted by Rick on November 5, at 8: When I think about politics in the workplace, to me, it always boils down to the fact that everyone wantsto have power, but there is only so much and so only a limited few can actually get i. If you are actually trying to go after a piece of their power then to them you are the enemy, even if your strategy is to use niceness to do so.

Enemies have to be crushed. If you are nice, then they will likely see you as less threatening and so they will reduce their assessment of how much they will have to do to neutralize you and render you no longer a threat. Posted by Government Worker on January 3, at 9: Posted by jrandom42 on January 22, at 4: Posted by dd on March 25, at 7: When I first started working, office politics to me was pointless. Posted by Dragoll on April 23, at 8: All this playing nice just to make yourself a better higher paying employee.


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I think when at the end of the day you ask the question — Whom am I ultimately making rich by putting all my efforts and playing nice? You are the master of your career, and you must learn how to choose your projects, demonstrate the necessary qualities ex: You had to use your brain and computer science knowledge to get in. This, combined with the dreaded perf cycle that everyone hates doing, causes serious morale issues. There is a lot of power hungry folks using their brain power for advancing their own careers. It looks as though Google provides its employees with well-rounded schooling in office politics.

I wish more people stayed there long enough to take full advantage of this amazing opportunity—and then moved on to other jobs. I feel that, contrary to the industry folklore, playing politics is becoming a lost art. Too many people are missing this valuable skill as it is, and the more gooey-eyed and millennial we get as a society, the less hope we have of perfecting our game. The reason I say this is all the snags I hit when selling intranet software to large and medium-sized businesses. Do you know the number one question I get from those folks?

How to Master Office Politics and Win Big

Buyer, just before I board the plane to fly across the country to give you a one-hour presentation. How the hell should I know the answer? I say none of that out loud. Instead, I tell you that your boss is welcome to call me anytime, as many times as it takes. In the meantime, you could make your job and mine a lot easier by learning to navigate your office politics. Nevertheless, since you put me on the spot, let me do my small part to remedy the situation. Here are some thoughts that may or may not help you convince your boss now or in the future.


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    • Your company has a written and unwritten code of behavior. The existing code has the burden of social proof on its side, and people will follow it, whether or not they agree with it. Now, I am not saying you can never change or bend the rules. Then learn the rules for changing the rules, if you are so inclined. Every business decision—from serving healthy food in the cafeteria to a major acquisition—has its winners and losers. The winners may or may not champion your cause, but the losers will resist it with all their might.

    Know who they are and work ahead of time to break their resistance. Note that elsewhere in life, it is wise to ignore the naysayers and focus on the people who support your idea. However, in business, as in politics, things are usually done by consensus. Therefore, an experienced office politician knows whose turf he is treading on and has a strategy to neutralize and destroy the opposition. Putting your boss on the losing end could be a career-killer, so be sure you understand his or her stake in the matter. I learned this from a friend who went to work for a large corporation fresh out of business school.

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